


Easy Living

by pretzels



Category: Original Work
Genre: (no rape or csa is shown onscreen), Child Abuse, Dissociation, Dissociative Amnesia, Forced Feminization, Implied/Referenced Brainwashing, Kidnapping, M/M, Pedophilia, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Sexual Slavery, Stockholm Syndrome, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-17
Updated: 2020-06-17
Packaged: 2021-03-03 20:35:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,993
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24771736
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pretzels/pseuds/pretzels
Summary: Yearbook, circle the pretty boys.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 40





	Easy Living

Blades of sunlight burn through the spaces between the window blinds. The room is hot, so the boy named Ginger had been dreaming of a beach, though he’s sure he’s never seen one before. He's never left this house and the property surrounding it before. Still, the dream persists: waves of water unrolling themselves along the sand over and over.

The sun flashes through his closed eyes until everything is red, so he opens them. The clock says 10:30. It always does. It could mean either AM or PM, Ginger doesn’t know. Doesn’t really care, honestly. The pendulum hasn’t moved in a long time. Just hangs there. Back when the clock hung over the dinner table weeks or maybe months ago, Ginger had once told Harold it looked like the clock was sticking its tongue out at them. Harold had laughed in response, his gray beard moving. It had been the hardest he had ever laughed at something Ginger had said, even though Ginger hadn’t meant it as a joke, and the next day and every day since, the clock was in the bedroom. Ginger misses those days.

But, it’s 10:30, and Ginger can’t sit here all day; that would be wrong. Today, the note on the bedside table only has one instruction:  _ Yearbook, circle the pretty boys,  _ written in Harold’s sloppy scrawl. The  _ y _ in  _ boys  _ is so messy it dips beneath the other letters. Ginger imagines Harold writing it as Ginger slept. Before the sun had come up, eating a strawberry Chobani yogurt—his favorite—for breakfast against the kitchen island, using the light of the open fridge to tear the page from a notebook and write this down.  _ Yearbook. Pretty boys.  _ Ginger turns the note around to scan the back, but there’s nothing. Just blank space. This note—it has to be a joke. It isn’t funny. 

But, on the bedside table are a red sharpie and the yearbook, waiting. It’s already open to a page, the third graders. That’s about the age Ginger had been when Harold brought him here, he thinks. He isn’t sure anymore. It doesn’t matter.

Ginger’s vision hazes as he tears the yearbook from the night table, staring down at the smiling pictures. Somewhere, a memory, so distant it’s almost like reading the words of someone else’s diary: picture day. Wearing nice clothes. A flash of camera light. It’s weird that everyone gets so dressed up even though the photographer only takes pictures from the shoulders up. No one would ever know what he had been wearing, or if he had been wearing anything at all. But it didn’t matter. Ginger wasn’t alive before Harold brought him here. He didn’t even have a name.

And suddenly, he can’t read. He squints at the names under the schoolchildren’s pictures, but they curl and bend on the page. Harold can’t be serious. And moments later, Ginger is in the bathtub, shaving the stubbly hair from his legs, his face. The razor pushes hard enough against the skin to draw blood. Some time ago, the first hints of hairs in his armpits he was able to pull out with his fingers. He used to stare at them under the bathroom light when Harold was asleep, twirling the hairs between the pads of his thumb and index finger to inspect them. Then he would blow them away into the air as kids whisper wishes into a dandelion. But Harold must have noticed the little red bumps the razor left on Ginger’s legs, knew what he was trying to hide. 

“Stupid, stupid,” Ginger says, not because he really believes it—even he can see that he’s getting older, but because he wants to hear his own voice in the silence. He knew this was coming. It’s been a long time since he had been invited to sleep in Harold’s bed, since Harold woke him up before he went to work just to kiss him. 

“Come cuddle?” Ginger would say because this was what he was supposed to say. But he also knew he meant it. He did. It was their special game. This was before hairs began poking out from his chin. He’d hold up the blankets, scooting farther down the bed to make space for Harold.

Then Harold’s line: “I have to go to work,” though he was already toeing off his shoes.

“Just a few minutes. Please.”

And Harold would loop his arms around Ginger for a few minutes, maybe even more. The clock was broken, so there was no way of knowing. It was warm in Harold’s arms, nice. Like ointment to a burn. He liked it there, their breathing matched. He could feel the scratch of Harold’s beard against his ear when Harold kissed it. And then Ginger would go to the window, watching Harold’s car drive away down the dirt road. The last time they did that must have been in the spring because it was before dead bugs started throwing themselves against the backdoor’s mesh screen.

They live a simple life, the two of them in the woods. The house isn’t big, just the right size. Cozy and just enough for two. It’s easy living, Harold calls it. In the winter, Harold chops trees for firewood and they sit by it drinking whisky-spiked hot chocolate. And they watch  _ It’s a Wonderful Life  _ and Harold usually falls asleep before George Bailey even makes it to the bridge, but Ginger sits wrapped in his blanket, watching until the bell on the Christmas tree rings and Zuzu’s line about angels getting their wings. Winters are nice.

The other seasons are nice, too. In the summers, Harold lets Ginger go on hikes with him. Not too far, but they can use small shovels to make holes and put seeds inside. They look at the streams and animals and Harold even lets Ginger use his camera to take pictures. When Harold comes home, he’ll come back with developed pictures. They’re glossy and Harold tells him to hold the pictures at their edges with the tips of his fingers, or else the oils on his hands will stain the photos. Ginger thinks that’s stupid—he always washes his hands after cooking with olive oil, there’s never any left on his hands—but he never questions it. He holds the pictures between his thumb and index fingers. Squirrels in trees, nibbling on acorns. A bee hovering over a pretty pink flower. Harold let Ginger hang up some of the photos on the bedroom walls. Others went into photo albums. One time, Harold even put one of the photos in a frame. The frame was black and shiny, holding the picture Ginger took of the sky. Bright blue, with wisps of cloud. Ginger had been so proud to see it hanging in the hallway like a piece of art.

In the fall, Harold brings home pumpkins for them to carve. Harold never let Ginger trick-or-treat, but he always brings home packages of candy for the two of them to split in a bowl as they watch television. Green leaves to red and brown and yellow ones to snow then to green leaves again. The outdoors change, the characters in the programs Harold lets him watch grow older and speak new lines, but the house stays the same. Every day, instructions on the night-stand that must be completed. The front door closed until Harold comes home. Time slows to a crawl until he comes home, but they have a good life, a nice life. Harold wouldn’t just let that end. Where would Ginger even go?

Ginger stands up from the bath and all the blood rushes from his head. He towels off his hair in front of the mirror and stares at the knob in his throat. It bobs when he swallows, a head trying not to sink in water. He’s getting old. He might even be in his teens now. He can barely even recognize the face in the mirror: long, bottle-dyed blonde hair, the way Harold liked it. Red-rimmed green eyes, one fake lash still glued onto his eyelid. For the first time in a while, Ginger wonders if the age-progressed photos they use would match what he actually looks like. He had been just a stupid little kid back then. That thought rises to the surface before he can drown it. They wouldn’t want him back now, anyway. Harold had told him, and Harold never lies. They never wanted them in the first place, so no use thinking of them. Ginger doesn’t even remember their faces. Better to only think of Harold. Harold is his only family. Harold thinks he’s beautiful, his special little boy. Does he still think that?

When Ginger comes out of the bathroom, the yearbook stays where he left it on the floor. He kicks it, sends it spinning under the bed. That’ll do for now. Now, he can’t see it anymore. Ginger wads up tissue to put between his toes so he can paint them. Maybe if he makes his toenails shine, Harold will let him stay. If he combs his hair just like this, Harold won’t get rid of him. If he pushes hard enough on his Adam’s apple he’ll swallow it back down and Harold will forget about the whole yearbook thing. If he makes a good dinner. If he asks for another few minutes.

By the time the sun starts to dip below the horizon, Ginger’s toenails shine pink and the kitchen smells like lasagna, Harold’s favorite. Who else would be so attentive? Who else would know the way that the folds of skin crinkle from Harold’s eyes when he smiles wide enough to show his sweetly crooked teeth? What sort of baby from a yearbook could be better to Harold? Ginger sits in the bathroom, combing his hair again and again so it’ll shine the way he knows Harold likes.

Ginger tries his hardest not to shake when he sees the headlights of Harold’s car come closer down the dirt road. He rushes down the hallway, stopping only to touch the framed sky for luck, before making his way to the foyer to greet Harold. He almost trips over the third stair down, catching himself on the railing. 

And then there’s the clicking of keys, locks turning, the door opening, and there’s Harold. Ginger pulls off his coat for him, kisses him on the lips before Harold can turn away. Before Harold can even speak, Ginger takes him by the hand to show him his work. 

“I did all this for you,” Ginger says, embarrassed at how the words bubble out of him too fast for him to think about what to say before he says it. He gestures at the set table, the fancy glassware they’ll be using tonight, the ones only used for special occasions. How he had brought the pendulum-tongued clock back down, carried it all by himself from the bedroom, and hung it back up in its old spot so he can say the line and they can laugh at it. At the foil pan full of lasagna, fresh and steaming. A crystal-cut glass of whisky at the table. Ginger feels a tide of adrenaline coursing through him, tingling in his fingertips, when he turns to see Harold’s reaction. But Harold only cocks his head at him, like all of Ginger’s affection is a curious overreaction.

“I’m starved, thanks,” Harold says politely before sitting down.

Ginger sits down across from Harold, but then thinks better of it and brings his own chair closer until they’re sitting next to each other. He winces at the screeching sound the chair’s legs make along the tiles as he pulls close. Ginger’s foot probes under the table, searching for Harold’s leg. Harold looks up for a moment, then smiles, even as he moves his leg away. Ginger looks up at the clock. 10:30.

“Notice anything different?” Ginger tries.

Harold looks up from his food and appraises the room before his eyes settle on Ginger’s face, his chin, his neck, before turning away. He’s frowning a little bit. “Well, I noticed that you cooked a really great dinner.”

Ginger can’t help the blush that creeps over his cheeks, on the tips of his ears. “Thanks. I did it for you,” he says again.

Harold clears his throat. “So, how was your day?” He asks in a way that isn’t like how lovers ask. It’s how the parents on television shows ask.

Ginger bites the inside of his cheek and tries again. There has to be a way. “Let’s talk about you.” He folds his hand over Harold’s on the table. Harold blinks down at it, but doesn’t move it away. Ginger lets out a breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding. 

“What about me?” Harold chuckles, sliding his hand out from under Ginger’s so he can grab his water glass, ignoring the whisky. “You know everything. I’m boring. Tell me about your day.”

Ginger forces a laugh out of his throat. “If you keep calling my boyfriend boring, we’re going to have a problem.”

Harold gives him a tight-lipped smile. “Ginger.”

Ginger makes sure to look Harold directly in the eyes so Harold can see how serious Ginger is. “Well, I cooked today. Do you like it?” Stupid. Harold had already mentioned that. Stupid, stupid. He’s getting careless. 

“Yeah, it’s good. Refill me?” 

Walking to the faucet, Harold’s cup in hand, Ginger goes over his options. He puts the glass on the counter. One hand’s on the sink’s knob, turning the cold on, while Ginger lets water run through his fingers to test its temperature. The water he doesn’t use circles down the drain. By the time he gets back to the table, he has a new plan. He was hoping he would be able to save this favor for later, for when he was certain Harold loved him again, but when he sits down again, Ginger bends his head so Harold can’t see the Adam’s apple, eats a forkful of lasagna, feels it slide down his throat, and begins.

“Can we go hiking again sometime? To the stream? It’s nice to watch the water.”

The words sound stupid to even his own ears. He hadn’t meant to say it like that. He wanted to make it sound more like a demand, less like a plea, to mention the photographs Harold loves so much, but instead he sounds whiny, like a stupid little kid who hasn’t learned his place yet.

“Ginger.”

“Please?”

Harold sighs and shakes his head. “Did you look at the yearbook?”

Ginger spears his pasta with his fork. He moves them around the bowl, with no apparent destination in mind. He can barely see anything in front of him, his vision is so clouded. Everything blurs, so he pretends he can’t hear Harold ask again if Ginger had done what the note had said. Maybe Harold hadn’t said it at all. Ginger hopes.

“Answer me,” Harold says, his voice harsher than it had been in years.

“Did you notice, Harold? I brought the clock down, see?”

Ginger watches Harold’s eyes move towards the clock. Towards its pendulum frozen in time. “Ginger, why won’t you answer me? You’re hurting my feelings.”

“Do you ever want to push it?”

A look of confusion flashes over Harold’s face, folds forming in his forehead, but Ginger can’t stop. He tries to keep his mouth closed, but somehow the words get out, anyway. He wants Harold to know. “I want to push the pendulum and see what happens.” He imagines the pendulum swinging all around the clock’s face like a pinwheel. The motion might even dislodge it from the wall. Maybe it would even take flight, zip right out the window, over the trees, down the dirt road. 

“It won’t work,” Harold says, sure of himself, dabbing at his mouth with a napkin. “It’s been stuck like that too long. Even a push won’t be enough to make it move. It isn’t any good anymore. See, babe?” Ginger watches Harold’s hands come closer until they’re on his face, tilting it up. Ginger feels the skin warm under Harold’s palms. “We’ll get a new one. Replace the old one.”

Ginger can’t even think. It feels like his mind crackles, ice cracking under Harold’s whisky when it's poured in. His mouth opens, closes. Air streams right out before it can reach his lungs.

But he must have done something right because Harold is smiling, and it’s the most beautiful thing in the world. Dimples on his cheeks, his mouth splitting. His thumb strokes along Ginger’s clean-shaven cheek. His voice quavers strangely when he speaks. “This is so nice. What we have.” Then Harold’s hands are gone, away, back to his fork. He opens his mouth to let loose a satisfied belch right into Ginger’s face. “It’s such easy living. Don’t you want to make me happy?”

Tears of relief prick against Ginger’s eyes. “Yes, of course. More than anything.”

“After dinner, will you do what I ask? Pick out the pretty ones. Only the best for me. Please? Then we can go hiking, I promise. You can bring the camera, even, and I'll take the shovel.”

Ginger looks down when he smiles, overcome. They’ll plant seeds. They’ll take pictures and they’ll go into frames. Slices of the sky in black frames. A new clock that works. He sees his own distorted reflection in the bend of the metal spoon beside his plate. The spoon’s surface squashes his features, makes him look baby-fatted, young again. “Of course.” 

And Harold kisses him like it’s the first time. Ginger’s insides swim, and he almost sinks down into Harold’s arms, but Harold wraps his hands around Ginger’s waist and hoists him up just in time so they’re both standing. Harold pulls away to look at him, and Ginger takes a breath of fresh air, almost too late.


End file.
